a year of continued and frightening environmental degradation and the looming prospect of severe food shortages in years to come. It is the image of workers in the Maoxian county of Sichuan, China, an area that has lost its pollinators through the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the over-harvesting of its honey. These workers aren’t picking fruit, or digging, or planting. They’re pollinating pear and apple trees by hand. In this part of China, the honeybee has been replaced by the human bee.

Gensou Hyouhon Hakubutsukan (“Museum of Fantastic Specimens”) is an online collection of creatures “curated” by Hajime Emoto. The three-story virtual museum consists of 9 rooms chock full of water- and land-dwelling monstrosities from all corners of the globe.

A recent New York Times Magazine article by Jon Mooallem discusses the research and assumptions surrounding “gay animals”. One of the more interesting issues that becomes a thread in the story is how often humans anthropomorphize animals in particularity using sexual orientation as a way to either prove or demonize the legitimacy of homosexuality.
“we’re quick to conceive of that great range of activities in the way it most handily tracks to our anthropomorphic point of view: put crassly, all those different animals just seem to be doing gay sex stuff with one another. ”

Besides its effectively genius simple mediation techniques (TVs strapped to protesting bodies in public spaces jihad-style; happy dolphin balloons armed with covert spycams), the fundamental argument is… unarguable. Dolphin slaughter should become an embarrassing harpoon in Japan’s public image.
- as top-of-the-food-chain eaters (like us), dolphin meat contains toxic levels of mercury (as much as 2000ppm, when safe consumption levels are .4 ppm);
- the yearly slaughter in Japan is an apparent add-on to the lucrative business of supplying tourist complexes with dolphins for swim n pet pools. Dolphins should not be kept in most or all captive situations, it causes high and depression to animals who need complex social and geographical ranges.
- most allegiances to Japan’s position on dolphin and whale killing are bought.